Lost at Sea
by analine
Summary: With the help of a young girl, Jack intervenes in a rift event that threatens to destroy Cardiff. Implied Jack/Ianto; past OFC.


**Title:** Lost at Sea  
**Characters/Pairing:** Jack, Ianto (implied Jack/Ianto; past OFC)  
**Warnings/Spoilers:** none  
**Rating:** PG  
**Word Count:** ~687  
**Summary:**With the help of a young girl, Jack intervenes in a rift event that threatens to destroy Cardiff.

**Notes**: Written for torchwood_las on LiveJournal, challenge #4. Prompts were "out of time" and "flower/flowers".

* * *

"There's no time," Jack shouts, competing for volume over the pelting rain and hail. He doubles over in pain — his stomach feels as if it's being wrenched in two. The ship pitches wildly.

They've been pursued. Gunshots. One had grazed his side, but he'd be okay, if they could just—

"Use it!" In the young woman's eyes he sees determination, fear. "Jeannie, the rift key! Now!"

* * *

Jack opens his eyes; he's clutching a bouquet of flowers. They're wet, and when he smells them, he smells the sea. The twinge of pain in his stomach is gone by the time he stands. The wind whips around his shoulders, and dark clouds stretch over the city — the last remnants of a storm.

_"If I use this—"_

_"Trust me, it's the only way. You have to use the key. This isn't supposed to happen, and you're the only one who can fix it."_

_"But if I use this, I'll disappear, right?"_

_"From this timeline, yes. But you'll return to where you're meant to be. Trust me," Jack says, closing his eyes. "It's better this way."_

_"But what about all this? This adventure of ours?"_

_She leans forward and kisses him, clutching at the collar of his coat with her fingers. She can't be more than twenty years old. He moves her hands away gently, and watches her cheeks flush._

_"Thank you, Captain," she says, pressing a handful of flowers to his chest. She'd been picking them on the cliff when he arrived._

Already, he hardly remembers her face. The timeline has collapsed, after all, taking his memories with it. The details are fading — the energy disturbance, how he'd known to bring the rift manipulator from the archives, the storm, the ship, the army at their heels, with enough power to destroy Cardiff. And they wouldn't have stopped there.

It had been risky, past spilling over into present, and more than that —an alternate past, one that never should have been.

He'd come alone, and if it hadn't been for the girl, he wonders if he would have been able to stop it. She said she loved the city more than anything, and together, they'd protected it. They'd righted what the rift threatened to ruin. She wanted to be remembered, and Jack had wanted to give her that much, at least.

But in the end, he'd chosen this.

He looks up at the Millennium Centre, rising wide and bright against the darkened sky. He starts for the boardwalk and makes it all the way down to the church before he turns back. The rain holds off, but it's hard to tell if the thunder is getting closer or further away.

When he opens the door to the Tourist Information Centre, Ianto looks up from his desk.

"Sir," he says, looking relieved to see him. "Gwen said you'd gone to check out a spike in rift energy outside Penarth."

Jack nods. "Yeah," he says, the details dim now, a faded still-frame — a girl by the sea, a ship, a storm.

Ianto watches him quietly, waiting. Jack wonders how long he's been gone. A deep rumble of thunder rattles the windows.

"Find anything?" Ianto finally asks.

"Nothing," Jack says. The word sounds strange, wrong somehow. "Must've been a glitch in the system."

He lays the bouquet of flowers down on the desk as Ianto stands to take his coat. Their hands brush together for a moment under the rough folds of fabric, and Jack watches the tension in Ianto's expression soften. He must have been gone much longer than he'd realized. He'll have to make up for making him worry like this.

Ianto glances at Jack curiously, then raises his eyebrows at the flowers.

"Are these for me, sir," he says, with a note of amusement. "You shouldn't have."

Jack stares at the flowers for a moment, and it feels strange, like trying to remember a dream after he's been awake for too long. _Where had they come from?_

Outside the sky is clearing; thunder rumbling out over the bay, another storm lost at sea.

"…of course they're for you, Ianto."

**end**


End file.
